MY BOSTON LOFTS

Designing an online home for Boston's most beautiful urban properties.

Web design / Content strategy

Objectives

Driving organic discovery of properties for sale and rent

Seamlessly integrate MLS listings into agency inventory

Heighten agency perception as a luxury expert

Kimball Borgo Real Estate is one of Boston's undisputed leader in the design, sales and marketing of luxury lofts in Boston, having spearheaded over 50 developments since 1986. Their work has been covered by national and international media including CNBC Real Estate Mover’s & Shaker’s, MTV Cribs, HGTV’s Design Space, Architectural Digest, The London Times, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and DWELL.

In 2017, they approached us for help creating a new user experience for their consumer real estate site My Boston Loft. With increasing competition from tech-forward competitors both nationally and locally, they required a site that could effectively showcase their inventory of elite properties and emphasize their expertise, all while encouraging users to reach out and signal interest.

Approach

The project began with a battery of audits measuring their current marketing footprint and outlining technical and design requirements for the new experience.

We determined that the new site should put a premium on simplicity while featuring the agency's properties using an immersive, highly visual layout. The user experience should eliminate as many potential distractions as possible, guiding the user through their search without interruptions. At the same time, the website should provide a wealth of educational information about renting or buying in Boston's neighborhoods: content that would serve to drive an influx of new traffic to My Boston Loft via Google and Bing.

The new homepage features a high-resolution, edge-to-edge photograph loaded randomly from a library of images from current inventory. In the center of the screen, beneath a header that features a redesigned wordmark, highly simplified navigation bar, and prominent "Contact Us" button, is a search area, allowing users to quickly begin their browsing lofts and apartments.

Logos highlighting My Boston Loft's enviable press coverage leads into a mosaic of images from neighborhoods across Boston, inviting users to learn more and begin their search by exploring the various unique areas that make up the city.

The neighborhood grid feeds into a key element of the new content strategy: neighborhood landing pages featuring photos, descriptions, important statistics and figures, and a gallery featuring neighborhood points of interest, restaurants, and shops.

Each property (both inventory unique to My Boston Lofts as well as selected listings fed by the MLS) is promoted on a page that includes an image selector, key listing information and amenities details, a dynamic map, and sharing information.

The design we crafted is being developed onto a proprietary distribution of WordPress woven into My Boston Loft's customer relationship management, analytics, and customer service tools, complete with a custom MLS integration.